The present invention relates generally to the field of preparing infused beverages using a disposable infusion apparatus. Tea preparation using a disposable tea bag would be the dominant beverage type and method related to this field of this invention. The improvements over prior art delivered by this invention extends to all beverage types prepared using dry materials that infuse contents into liquid.
Tea is the number one brewed beverage consumed by volume in the world and the number two beverage consumed after water. According to Wikipedia 2014, “Tea is the most popular manufactured drink in the world in terms of consumption. Its total consumption equals all other manufactured drinks in the world, including; coffee, chocolate, soft drinks, and alcohol, combined.”
According to the 2013 US Tea Fact Sheet, tea can be found in almost 80% of all U.S. homes. It is the only beverage commonly served hot or iced, anytime, anywhere, for any occasion. On any given day, over 158 million Americans are drinking tea. In 2012, Americans consumed well over 79 billion servings of tea, with approximately 85% of this consumption being iced. Hot brewed tea consumption is 11.85 Billion units per year or 32.5 Million units per day.
In 2012, over 65% of the total tea brewed in the United States was prepared using tea bags. Away from home consumption of tea has increased by at least 10% over the last decade and the industry anticipates strong, continuous growth over the next five years. This growth will come from all segments driven by convenience, benefits of healthy properties of tea, the continued development of unique blends and flavors and the ability to deliver health improving supplements. Global first world country tea consumption markets are massive and continue to expand. Currently, tea of all types, flavor and supplement infusions can be accessed through online companies and through a growing retail market of tea stores and other retail outlets.
The first tea bags were hand-sewn silk bags. Tea bag patents date as early as 1903 (U.S. Pat. No. 723,287), and tea bags were successfully marketed by the tea and coffee shop merchant Thomas Sullivan from New York, who shipped his tea bags around the world. The loose tea was intended to be removed from the sample bags by the customers, but they found it efficient to brew the tea with the tea still enclosed in the bags. Over the last century the tea bag, has seen some improvements in structure and membrane materials used. Modern tea bags are typically made of paper fiber. The heat-sealed paper fiber tea bag was invented by William Hermanson, who subsequently sold his patent to the Salada Tea Company in 1930.
In 1944, the typical shape of the tea bag was upgraded from the sack style of bag to the rectangular style of tea bag. In 1952, Lipton Tea Company patented a “flow-thru” bag, which has four sides (U.S. Pat. No. 5,366,741). In 1992, Tetley launched the round tea bag and actively marketed the benefits of faster and stronger infusion. The pyramid tea bag shape was invented by Brooke Bond and continues to be a popular in India and is marketed through the brand, Taj Mahal Tea. This invention increased the area for tea to move freely in the tea bag versus a flat tea bag. This change results in greater total tea leaf surface area being made available to water which can result in improved infusion.
The goal of the majority of these evolving tea bag inventions is to enable more water to flow over a greater surface area of tea leaves and produce a stronger infusion, faster. The tea bag advantage is that it is highly portable, disposable and can be used to deliver varying beverage strengths.
A disadvantage with the string attachment used to facilitate infusion with a tea bag is that it delivers a short distance of tea bag movement and a weak velocity of movement in liquid causing more effort and time to be exerted to generate an infused beverage. The string is also often not used to move the tea bag to facilitate infusion and is just used to remove the tea bag from the beverage container, once steeping is complete. The weakness of infusion ability of the string and tea bag apparatus also makes it increasingly harder to utilize one tea bag to generate multiple servings of strong infusions. Opportunity exists to improve on this prior art by providing means to increase the distance and velocity of tea bag movement in a beverage container in order to deliver improved infusion results.
Another disadvantage associated with tea bags is the sloppiness and inefficiency in handling a liquid infused tea bag after beverage preparation and disposal. Opportunities exist to improve on this prior art by providing means to increase the cleanliness and efficiency of tea bag handling during use and disposal.
In recent years, loose leaf tea consumption has significantly increased at home, at work and in retail outlets. There are many methods and devices that have been invented in order to enable the use of loose leaf tea to facilitate infusion and generate beverages.
“Tea socks” are used to create infused beverages using loose-leaf tea. These tea-bag-like infusers that are constructed with similar materials and, like tea bags, are disposable. They are filled with the infusible materials of your choice and then folded, clipped or tied shut for during infusing. Upon completion of infusion these socks are removed and thrown away. Another patented example is a cup sized disposable cone (U.S. Pat. No. 5,424,083) that is filled with infusible materials then liquid is poured into the cup and it filters through the disposable cone filter. The filter is then removed from the cup and the infused beverage remains. The disadvantages with these prior art methods are the same as tea bags and also include the fact that loose leaf tea or other beverage infusion materials need to be separately acquired and placed in these disposable infusion containers.
Other non-disposable, re-usable individual brewing devices mount directly on a beverage container and are used to facilitate loose leaf tea infusions. A device (U.S. Pat. No. 4,619,830) uses a filter suspended on a rod, where the filter can hang within a cup, and is removed when steeping is complete. Another patented device, the “Tea Ball” (U.S. Pat. 2007/0101870) employs an apparatus that includes a tea basket that is filled with loose leaf tea and supported for infusion be a circular device that fits around the rim of a beverage container. Another patented device, is a metal basket that is filled with loose leaf tea and hangs on the side of a cup and submerges the loose leaf tea into the liquid in the cup in order to facilitate infusion (US 2014/0053737). The disadvantages with these types of devices are that they can be unstable, are not very portable, are apparatus intensive, only fit specific size beverage containers, require loose leaf tea supplies to be available and require excessive apparatus handling and cleaning requirements.
“French press” or “Bodum” type devices which are primarily used for coffee can also be used to brew loose leaf tea and other infusible beverages. Basically, the infusible material is placed in a beverage container containing hot water and the steeping process occurs. When steeping is complete a plunger device that is fitted for the beverage container and is largely comprised of a fine mesh is depressed and the infusible material is captured at the bottom of the device and a consumable infused beverage results. The coffee press was first patented (U.S. Pat. No. 1,797,672) by Italian Designer Attilio Calimani in 1929. It underwent several design modifications through Faliero Bondanini, who patented his “Chambord” version in 1958 (U.S. Pat. No. 2,900,896). This type of device was further popularized globally by the Danish tableware and kitchenware company, Bodum (U.S. Pat. D557,978).
Disadvantages with this method are the cleaning requirements for each infusion occurrence and the requirement to have the device available limits portability. Also tea will continue to steep even after the plunger is depressed which may cause the tea remaining in the press to become an undesirable flavor. This can be prevented by pouring the tea into another container, which is another handling and cleaning disadvantage.
Disposable beverage press (U.S. Pat. No. 20,130,125,761) type devices have been patented. These devices are basically beverage presses designed with disposable materials and fitted for a disposable cup. The disadvantages are the same for these types of inventions as the non-disposable press designs, except for the cleaning requirements. These devices are also apparatus and process intensive which counters the goals of ease of beverage preparation that should accompany portability and disposability.
Another group of methods and devices currently used to deliver infused beverages are cartridge based beverage delivery systems. The Keurig Company is a well-known brand of patented beverage infusion machines that use disposable single serving beverage cartridges (U.S. Pat. No. 7,165,488). These machines use specific shaped disposable cartridges that are full of infusible materials. The dominant usage volumes are coffee cartridges, but they also supply cartridges with beverage infusions for tea, cider, hot cocoa, and other specialty infusions. The machines are filled with cup sized portions of water and the water is passed through the inserted cartridges. The result is a fixed portion size of a fixed strength beverage. The used cartridge can then be removed from the machine and the cartridge disposed.
The advantages of this machine and cartridge system are that beverages can be efficiently prepared with a clean preparation and disposal process. This method is of significant value to hotel businesses where customers can efficiently enjoy hot beverages in their room. These machines are also used in homes and businesses that supply beverage options for employees.
A significant disadvantage with these machine-cartridge based systems is that the physical size of these brewing machines eliminates the ability to enjoy portability. These cartridges also deliver only one flavor strength of brewed beverages. Users have no opportunity to under or over infuse the flavor transfer to their desired strength with these machine-cartridge based systems. Another disadvantage with the cartridge and machine system is that a single serving is the result of the use of one cartridge, there is no ability to generate another quality strength beverage serving out of a single serving cartridge. With cartridge and machine designs being patent protected the cost per serving can be significantly higher than other methods.
Opportunities exist to improve over this prior art by delivering high quality infusion beverage types and flavors with a portable, disposable apparatus that does not require any cleaning, can deliver the flexibility for Users to prepare their desired infusion strengths and can deliver multiple servings of desired strength beverages. As previously disclosed in this section, the infusible beverage global market is massive and expanding. Premium tea types, flavors and health improving supplements can be ordered on-line from a large variety of global and regional companies. Opportunities have been identified that improve on prior art by providing products that improved customers experiences and deliver additional value as part of a portable and disposable premium infused beverage.
We identified that opportunities exist to improve on prior art by adding additional products to a beverage infusion apparatus that are efficiently attached and attractively displayed. These added products can be personalized in order to deliver an added “positive emotional” boost and/or “show off ability” boost to a User. These added headers enable “game changing” sales methods to be executed that will attract and retain current infused beverage Customers and enable the creation and retention of new Customers.
Opportunities exist to deliver value to businesses by leveraging a daily consumable beverage infusion apparatus that can also communicate information to Consumers. Opportunities exist to leverage current internet e-commerce abilities to enable high-quality personalized and customized gifts that deliver premium infused beverages of a variety of types and flavors that also deliver personalized images that are of great value to gift receivers. Opportunities exist to efficiently deliver other value and experience enhancing products with a beverage infusion apparatus that are not delivered by prior art. For example, the ability to enjoy a cold and flu medicine infused tea created with the infusion apparatus and then enjoying a throat lozenge lollipop that is detached from the infusion apparatus tea-bag attachment after the beverage is enjoyed.